“What are double dragons?” Mel whispered to Dallas, too curious to not ask in spite of the pervasive silence right now.
“Enforcers of the shifter world that operate in pairs,” Dallas whispered back, his voice extra rumbly when speaking low. “They’re in charge of keeping law and order and making sure people don’t discover shifters.”
Mel’s stomach dropped. Were they here for her?
One of the men who was about as tall as Harrison, with bright-green eyes and short, bright-blond hair, eyed her for a moment. His companion had black hair that almost seemed to have hints of blue in it and came down around his collar, and he was a bit shorter and leaner, though still muscled.
“Harrison, good to see you again,” the blond one said.
Harrison tipped his hat but stopped a few feet from them and folded his arms, the air still tense. “Troy, Jack.” He nodded at the blond, then at the black-haired one next to him.
“Mighty fine mess you and your boys made here,” Jack said, grinning as he appraised the still-burning wreckage of cars around them and the mounds of upturned earth from the basilisk fight.
Troy didn’t seem as amused. “You have no idea the kind of trouble you’ve caused.” His eyes narrowed on Dallas. “Especially you, tiger.”
Mel’s hackles rose instinctively. The ones causing trouble had been the Blackhearts, not Dallas and his family.
But she kept quiet for now, waiting to see what would happen first.
“When I told you to keep an eye on the reporter coming into town, I didn’t mean raise hell,” Troy said, frown dimming his otherwise ethereal beauty.
Harrison squared his posture, calm but resolute. “If you’re looking to take my people into custody, you’ve got another thing coming, friend.”
Troy cocked his head at Harrison, then chuckled. “As if we even could, Harrison. No, there are much bigger things to worry about right now than what your people are guilty of. Starting with this guy here.” He looked over at Madsen, whose eyes were bulging with worry even as Reno continued to drag him around like a dog with a toy. “With your permission, I’d like to speak to your tiger personally.”
Harrison seemed slightly mollified by this. “If you come in peace, then you’re among allies. Test us, and you’ll see what Dragonclaw is really capable of.”
Troy just laughed again. “After all these years, I still can’t get you cowboys to trust us. Well fine, I’ve got big enough problems in the city.”
With that, Harrison walked alongside Troy and Jack while they came closer.
Her heart racing, Mel jumped in front of Dallas, scared at the idea of him being caught breaking the number-one shifter rule. “Please don’t take Dallas away!”
Dallas nudged himself forward, in front of her now. “Don’t you dare touch my mate.”
Troy stopped, and his expression was unreadable for a moment as he looked between them. “The reporter and the tiger? You’re joking, right?”
“Love is love. Even dragons know that,” Harrison said.
“Fate’s funny that way,” Jack chimed in, standing closer to Troy than anyone else.
Troy raked a big hand over his face and sighed. “I guess I don’t even care at this point. You are aware that humans have video of you shifting right in the middle of fucking Main Street in Parson’s Creek. Do you know how much trouble you’d be in normally? You’d be branded an outlaw by the shifter community, hunted for breaking the rules.”
Dallas growled. “I don’t care.”
“Be that as it may, even with the help of our tech specialists, copies of the video are already circulating on the internet. People are going crazy despite most thinking it’s a hoax. There’s evidence of shifters. And not just the blurry videos of wolves or bears caught in the woods or pictures people have snapped of cloaked dragons when they’re flying. No, this shit is real.”
Everyone was quiet, the gravity of the situation settling on all of them.
“For now, it’s contained. In a few months, hopefully, it will all just be rumors.” Troy continued.
“But these guys were trying to start a war between shifters and humans!” Mel exclaimed, the reporter in her unable to keep from spouting the truth regardless of who these guys… er, dragons thought they were.
Troy and Jack both raised an eyebrow at her. “Spunky enough to talk back to a black dragon. Rare quality in a human,” Jack said, a hint of mirth in his expression.
Troy scowled. “Spunky and foolhardy. Yes, we were already aware of the Blackheart’s movements through our channels back east. In fact, we’ve been watching all of this. The basilisks. Dragonclaw. Seeing how it would unfold.”
The basilisk who’d been just standing in human form, making not a single sound, perked up at this.
“In fact, we’ve been hunting Madsen for years. And I have to hand it to you. This all could’ve gone a lot worse if they’d actually gotten their hands on one of your desert monsters.”
“The basilisks have always been Dragonclaw’s problem, long before all of this started happenin’. We weren’t going to let that happen,” Clancy said over them, his dragon shaking the ground as he spoke.
“And as it stands, they’ll be your problem still if we can come to an agreement,” Jack said.
Everyone listened, and Troy looked straight at Mel, his emerald-green eyes glinting in the sun as it emerged from the clouds above.
“Do you love this tiger?”
Mel gasped. That was a sudden turn of events.
“I do. With all my heart. I’d give up everything for him,” she said
“Now you, tiger. Same question.”
Dallas growled. “She’s my mate. I’d die for her.”
“Clearly,” Troy said unsarcastically as he looked at the destruction around them. “If you two are willing to be
